Hapoel Tel Aviv downed Bahcesehir 84-77 as the Reds knocked off the first place in team EuroCup Division A and improved their record to 10-6 on the season and move into second spot in the standings. Jonathan Motley, Marcus Foster, Ish Wainright and Tomer Ginat all filled the basket for Hapoel Tel Aviv while Jaleen Smith, Tai Odiase and Furkan Korkmaz kept Bahcesehir close as the Reds held a slim 38-35 lead at halftime.

Yam Madar scored feely from deep while Motley continued to find the bottom of the basket for Dimitrios Itoudis’s team, Furkan Haltali and Tyler Cavanaugh tried to keep the Turkish team in the game but Foster and Ginat scored as well to close out the win for Hapoel.

Motley scored 19 points, Foster added 17 points and Madar scored 16 points in the win. Smith and Korkmaz each scored 13 points and Halal scored 12 points in the loss.

“I am happy because we played against a well deserved leader of the group and one of the best teams in the EuroCup,” Itoudis said following the game. “They are well coached and they have a great team but we rose up to the occasion and we came out with a big second half. We saw where to attack them, we did a better job with our pick and roll creation and we took away their drives which hurt us in the first half. The team in general performed well and we have to need to keep growing as we are going on in a good way.”

The game MVP Jonathan Motley spoke about the keys to victory, “We wanted to make sure that in the second half we fixed up our mistakes that we had first half. We played good defense and we only gave up 77 points in the game while we scored 46 points in the 2nd half. As for my play, I just try to do whatever helps my team to win and be an extension of the coach and an extra playmaker out there. After last week’s loss, we needed to comeback and we wanted to finish the game and do a better job with that.”